Here's just something i whipped up to show the sorta competition Phantom will be facing...and release dates in general...

All release dates can be found at IMDB.

PHANTOM: Release Dates vs. Others

UNITED KINGDOM - December 10th (Fri)

Dec 3 - The Polar Express, Christmas with the Kranks, The Merchant of Venice
Dec 8 - Blade 3
Dec 10 - Phantom of the Opera
Dec 17 - Lemony Snickets
Dec 24 - House of Flying Daggers
Dec 26 - The Aviator

SPAIN - December 15th (Wed)

Dec 3 - The Polar Express, Christmas with the Kranks
Dec 10 - Cinederella Story, Bad Santa, The Machinist
Dec 15 - Phantom of the Opera
Dec 17 - Ocean's 12
Dec 22 - Sky Captain, Taxi 2

GERMANY - December 16th (Thu)

Dec 2 - Bridget Jones 2
Dec 8 - Anacondas
Dec 9 - The Incredibles
Dec 16 - Ocean's 12, Phantom of the Opera
Dec 23 - Alexander, Spongebob, Around the World in 80 Days

MALAYSIA - December 16th (Thu)

SWITZERLAND (German) - December 16th (Thu)

(F) - French Region
(G) - German Region
(I) - Italian Region

Dec 2 - Bridget Jones 2 (G), Christmas with the Kranks (G)
Dec 3 - Christmas with the Krangs (I), The Polar Express (I)
Dec 8 - The Incredibles (G), Polar Express (F), Blade 3 (F)
Dec 9 - Anacondas (G)
Dec 10 - Closer (I), National Treasure (I)
Dec 15 - Ocean's 12 (F)
Dec 16 - Ocean's 12 (G), Phantom of the Opera (G)
Dec 17 - Shrek 2 (I), Ocean's 12 (I), Phantom of the Opera (I)
Dec 22 - National Treasure (F)
Dec 23 - Christmas with the Kranks (F)

AUSTRIA - December 17th

Dec 3 - Bridget Jones
Dec 8 - The Incredibles
Dec 10 - Anacondas
Dec 17 - Ocean's 12, Phantom of the Opera
Dec 23 - Alexander

ITALY - December 17th (Fri)

Dec 3 - Polar Express
Dec 7 - National Treasure
Dec 10 - Closer
Dec 17 - Ocean's 12, Shrek 2, Phantom of the Opera
Dec 22 - Melinda and Melinda

BELGIUM - December 22th (Wed)

Dec 8 - Bridget Jones 2, Polar Express
Dec 15 - Blade 3, Birth, 2046
Dec 22 - Ocean's 12, Lemony Snickets, Phantom of the Opera, Princess Diaries 2
Dec 23 - Exorcist, Alfie, Finding Neverland

SWEDEN - December 25th (Sat)

Dec 10 - Ocean's 12, Polar Express, Christmas with the Kranks
Dec 17 - Princess Diaries 2, 2046
Dec 25 - Shark Tale, Phantom of the Opera
Dec 29 - National Treasure

AUSTRALIA - December 26th (Sun)

Dec 9 - Ocean's 12
Dec 16 - Lemony Snickets
Dec 26 - Incredibles, Meet the Fockers, Blade 3, Phantom of the Opera, A Very Long Engagement, Ray

NORWAY - December 26th (Sun)

Dec 10 - Polar Express
Dec 17 - Ocean's 12
Dec 26, National Treasure, Shark Tale, Phantom of the Opera, Princess Diaries 2

Very steep competition for the most part! :? It will have it's set adult crowd as a base too and perhaps a few surprises! Hopefully decent WOM will propel it if it is likeable with the audience!

I so hope you are wrong , you are putting your anger in the wrong place....you are comparing your experience from a play to a film.....it's a totallly different medium and dynamics.....even if the story is the same.

I hope that $85 continues to burn you and moreso..... .... :wink: .....this is not personal

Well after creating the above list, it really opened my eyes, i totally didn't expect the competition to be this fierce.....there are no markets where Phantom will be the standalout movie (not even in UK).....WOM will be crucial....

At least you've been posting there.....some good discussions......well done.....

And glad to hear you are feeling better.....Im gelir an le

Recent Phantom Commentary



Article Date: November 26, 2004 | Publication: The Telegraph (London) | Author: editors]

Two relative unknowns have been chosen to star in the screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical 'The Phantom of the Opera'. John His**** reports

They seem an unlikely couple: the happy-go-lucky Scotsman who used to sing in a rock band, and the opera-trained American teenager. Yet when Emmy Rossum saw Gerard Butler lurking in the shadows at her screen test in New York, she knew he was the man to play the Phantom to her Christine.

"Gerry was kind of in the corner lurking in the darkness," she recalls. "When it was over, as I left I saw him in the shadows wearing a dark coat and smoking a cigarette and I remember thinking in retrospect how appropriate it was for the Phantom."

Andrew Lloyd Webber has gambled by choosing two relative unknowns, neither of whom had seen his hit stage musical, to star in his long-awaited £45 million film version of The Phantom of the Opera, about a disfigured musical genius who haunts the Paris opera house. His original choices when the film was first considered 16 years ago were his then-wife Sarah Brightman and Michael Crawford.

Now it is up to the cinema-goer to decide whether Gerard Butler and 18-year-old Emmy Rossum – she was 16 when she won the role – will go down in history as one of cinema's famous couples.

Rossum seemed already destined for stardom when she auditioned for the role of Christine. She began her theatrical career at the age of seven when she was chosen to join New York's Metropolitan Opera. For the next five years she appeared in 20 different operas singing in five languages, working alongside some of the world's greatest opera singers. She made her television debut in a daytime soap opera when she was 11 and played the teenage Audrey Hepburn in a television film.

Her performance as Sean Penn's daughter in the drama Mystic River was described as "transfixing" by the New York Times and she more than held her own in the big-budget disaster epic The Day After Tomorrow.

She laughs when she recalls her singing audition for Lloyd Webber in his New York apartment. "He had the most magnificent apartment I had ever seen and I was floored by it. I went in and started vocalising with the accompanist and Andrew walked in as we were preparing. He didn't say hello, didn't introduce himself and just sat down in front of me and said, 'Shall we?'

"I thought to myself it was my one shot so I had better just stand up and do it, so I didn't introduce myself, I nodded to the accompanist and I did the two biggest numbers in the show. Then he stood up and said: 'That was great. I'm Andrew.'"
Emmy Rossum

Because she had never seen the stage show she had no preconceptions about Christine, although reading the script she quickly realised the size of the task in front of her. "This girl couldn't be more different from me," she says. "I am a happy, sociable, really rational girl and she is a young woman who is very lonely and who is tortured emotionally.

"I had never felt the fear and the real terror that she experiences so I went to the Museum of Television and Radio and I watched tapes of the Holocaust and I watched what it was like in the camps and I watched mothers dragging their children. It was so powerful and so frightening." Her voice tails off and she wipes tears from her eyes.

"It took me a while to come out of the hole and see the light again."

Unlike Rossum, Butler, a 35-year-old former lawyer from Glasgow, was particularly in need of a career boost when he caught the attention of director Joel Schumacher, who recommended him to Lloyd Webber. Though he had landed several leading roles, they were in turkeys such as Dracula 2000 and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life, and he had failed to make much impression in Hollywood.

But he didn't give up. He had sung with a rock band called Speed and when he heard that Schumacher was considering him for the Phantom role, he immediately hired a voice coach.

"I knew I could sing but I didn't know if I could sing the songs from the Phantom of the Opera, so I hired the coach because I didn't want to waste their time or mine," he says. "I had three or four sessions with the coach and when I met Joel I didn't tell him that I had taken singing lessons."

Schumacher was impressed and Butler then auditioned for Lloyd Webber. Although he was so nervous his legs were shaking, he passed the test. He then had to endure several nine-hour make-up sessions where he estimates he tried on a thousand masks of different shapes and sizes before the right one was found.

Although he considers the figure of the Phantom as "sad" rather than sexy, the director, he says, "wanted to push the sexy aspect of it for the film".

"I trust that my chemistry with Emmy was very sexy because I used so much passion and longing towards her, which wasn't difficult because she's beautiful and she's sexy and I enjoyed delving into that older-younger thing because it was dramatic and," he bursts out laughing "in some ways it was a dream come true for a guy who ain't 22 any more."

How does he think it will be received? "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous, but it's not the sort of nervousness that's keeping me awake at night because I'm confident and think it's a great movie," says Butler. "I hope it's going to become a timeless classic. I've had a lot of people saying in disbelief, 'Gerry Butler? Playing the Phantom?' I want to prove them wrong and Andrew right."

# 'The Phantom of the Opera' opens on December 10.

Here's a toast....

Le echelithar aen
Athar fuin ban
Rhaw lîn mannen
Ind tham lîn
Lanc na chen be-thobas.



BTW - just so that you don't have to look far..... :wink:
http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/movie_soundtrack_rotk.htm

Beautiful, here's a person who is so torn inside and shaped by his own fears and insecurities.....a very nice pic to show that emotion Miruvor.....fantastic.....

BTW - I'm off to lunch.....if you are on latter tonight Miruvor, maybe we can continue this.....until next time.....Namarie

Yes, so true. I can see myself somewhat in the internal dynamics of the Phantom.

You and I shall meet again! If not later, then at the morrow!
I'm out with this girl for part of the evening! :wink: Hopefully I won't be bad company by way of fatigue!

Good eats mate!

Navaer mellir nîn

Mirûvor and Arch

Don't be offended. Everybody is entitled to their opinions. It doesn't bother me If people hate movies I like or vice versa. That is what makes it fun.

Arch, sweet personal gratification for me would be for ALW to lose his shirt on this as payback for my $85

Why would I be offended? Come now laddie. I don't think you read my earlier statement well enough! You could never wind me up enough to warrant an offense! I am far beyond that sort of mentality! You have been found wanting in my eyes.


'In the end you find that you're just like me....A small boat on a raging sea!'

Offended? Hardly, we all understand about different taste in movies, that's a no brainer.......howevever, it's kinda funny that the reason you put forward was because you hated the play and that it wasn't worth your $85.....

I like that last quote, who's it from......that should be one of the key rules for the forums.......

EMMY & PATRICK: Entertainment Weekly Photoshoot

http://www.phantomfans.net/index.php?sh ... =4646&st=0

Looks great and that red dress is so sexy.....





See all of them HERE:

http://www.phantomphan.net/gallery/thum ... p?album=28

HBO FIRST LOOK: Phantom

http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/Schedu ... _ID=618728

Running Time: 13 minutes

Genre:

An inside look at Joel Schumacher's take on the beloved Broadway musical about a disfigured man living below a Parisian opera house while harboring a growing obsession for the lead singer's understudy. With Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Minnie Driver and Alan Cumming( :wink: ).

CHECK LINK for Times

Just a nose up to everyone....the ROTK Extended DVD Trailer is out......a Full 6 MINS......please visit TORN for all the details......

Bloody stupid connection......it's taking forever downloading this 35mb file......still not finished yet :x :x

Gerard Butler & Imogen Lloyd Webber

From Hello Magazine

Is the ALW new wife? Cool name, Imogen! I've always liked that name!

I'm not sure of his personal life, i originally thought that was his daughter.... :?

INTERVIEW MAGAZINE: Gerard Butler

MORE can be found here:
http://www.gerard-butler.net/4images/ca ... cat_id=240

NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEWS: Nominations Dec 1st

Only a day or so away......and this is the first chance for us to guage some kind of reception towards the movie.....

Most screenings have gone well thus far, and many sites are predcting Phantom's appearance inside the Top 10, and even the Top 3.

http://www.nbrmp.org/awards/

http://www.thefilmexperience.net/Awards/oscardiary.html

"......My Predictions: Closer, Kinsey, & The Phantom of the Opera for spots within the top five --one of them will be at #1. I'm guessing Closer. With Kinsey at #2 --only because everyone is guessing Kinsey --it is right in line with what they like but they do throw curveballs. Other films in their top ten? Two other spots I'm guessing in no particular order: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Human Nature is the only Kauffman related film that they have ignored), Sideways (they rarely forget the critical leader). That's five pictures I feel very confident about........"

Last Year's Top 10:
Mystic River
The Last Samurai
The Station Agent
21 Grams
House of Sand and...
Lost in Translation
Cold Mountain
In America
Seabiscuit
Master &Commander

Previous Best Film Winners:
2003 Mystic River
2002 The Hours
2001 Moulin Rouge
2000 Quils
1999 American Beauty

10 Days....




Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world,
leave all thoughts of the world you knew before,
let your soul take you where you long to be,
only then can you belong to me.

Phantom director`s mother trouble

http://www.channel4.com/film/newsfeatur ... 0711A00009

Keira Knightley and Katie Holmes were both passed over for the role of Christine in the movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom Of The Opera.

But now director Joel Schumacher is reported to have clashed with the mother of his choice for the role, 18-year-old Emmy Rossum.

Early buzz on the film suggests the unknown actress may turn out to be the weak link.

Best-picture Oscar favorite? It's anyone's guess

By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/new ... ions_x.htm

This is not an Oscar season for faint-of-heart gamblers



With no award-season titan looming as in years past, the Academy Awards race for best picture is as open a field as any in recent memory.

"I can't recall going into December when we didn't have at least one film that was a sure thing for best picture," Oscar analyst Pete Hammond says. "This year, it's anyone's race."

Still, several films are causing a stir — for succeeding or failing — among academy voters.

---

The Phantom of the Opera, Dec. 22. "No one seems in the middle of the road; they either hate it or love it," Hammond says of the musical starring Gerard Butler.

Well, there's 1 review up at Rotten Tomatoes and it's totally NEGATIVE........

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1000259 ... the_opera/
http://www.shadowsonthewall.co.uk/04/phanoper.htm

Howevever, the review is now edited with the line.....

Full review has been embargoed in line with British film distribution rules. It will be posted closer to the release date.

Hmm....